Whenever I talk sports with friends from back home in Boston they bring up Tampa’s reputation as a poor sports town. I quietly laugh with them and nod.
But it is not because they are right. It is because their mocking reminds me why I love to live here.
You see, in Boston, the sports fan is more unstable than anyone else in the country. When the Red Sox lose a game in April to the New York Yankees, the Boston Police Department has to work double shifts to make sure fans leaving Fenway do not try to run across the Massachusetts Turnpike.
Take my father, a 26-year Navy veteran who now works for the Federal Aviation Administration. He is one of the most intelligent and wise men I have ever met—except on Sundays. In the course of an average Patriots game he will declare them Super Bowl champions and the worst team in NFL history more times than you can count.
And to a certain degree, they are all like that. Not even I am immune to it. My particular weakness is Boston Bruins hockey. I go nuts watching it.
Boston fans are proud of this chaotic quirk. And it would be one thing if that was the only thing wrong with them. But they aren’t just living with a perpetual cloud of sports induced misery over their heads.
They are also mean.
Boston sports fans seem to have convinced themselves that they are the smartest and most loyal spectators in all of creation. They have developed this delusion from a time-honored tradition of thinking that fans of other teams are massive jerks or just do not exist.
That’s the image my Boston friends have of my new Tampa neighbors. Which, aside from some empty seats at The Trop, is largely untrue.
And who cares if you don’t show up for games. I totally don’t blame you for it. I have been inside Tropicana Field and it’s just a warehouse covered in lead paint with a baseball diamond awkwardly put in the middle—not a place you pine to spend a sunny afternoon.
Despite their fake sell-out streak, the Red Sox haven’t exactly filled the friendly confines of Fenway Park this season. But just ask and they will all tell you they are real fans who stick it out through the tough times.
Lies! No one wants to pay money to see a team lose.
This is what I put up with now living in Florida. I’m mugged with Facebook posts and tweets about how much I must miss being around real sports fans. The truth is that I love the fans in Tampa Bay.
They are just as passionate, but without all that emotional baggage.
